Stephen Huyler: “Daughters of India” and other stories

Book launch at NID: Stephen Huyler speaks of “Shakti – The dominant female principle in India”

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Stephen Huyler posing in the NID Library with five of his books, all well used by students and faculty, from the NID archives.

An impromptu display of books was created in the NID library to let the students know that the author of the five books on Indian art and culture was also speaking at the NID Auditorium on the evening of 4 March 2009. The occasion was the promotion of his new book “Daughters of India” across India and the stop at NID was one of many pit stops across many cities in India at the invitation of the publisher, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad. I had met Stephen Huyler first in 1986 at a conference on Design of Crafts Museums at New Delhi, which was organized by the Crafts Council of India in October 1986. It was during this very conference that my book “Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India” was formally released at a simple function at the National Crafts Museum at Pragati Maidan and Stephen Huyler and all the other speakers of the conference were present at the release function where Shri P A Sangma, MP from Meghalaya was to chief guest. Stephen Huyler’s then new book had been released a year earlier and “Village India” (1985) still remains the only significant study on rural arts and crafts and lifestyles that cover the whole sub-continent between the covers of one richly illustrated book. This was followed up “Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India” (1994), “Gift of Earth: Terracotas and Clay Sculptures of India” (1996), “Meeting Gods: Elements of Hindu Devotion” (1999) and now with his inspired offering, “Daughters of India: Art and Identity” (2008).

Image 02: Stephen Huyler featured in a series of events at NID. Exchange of books “Handmade in India” for “Daughters of India” between the Editors and the Author at the Gautam-Gira Square under the Big Tree at NID, followed by a visit to the NID Library and then onto the NID Auditorium for the book sale and talk by the Author.

Aditi and I got a signed copy of Stephen Huylers book for the man himself and we in turn gifted him an inscribed copy of Handmade in India in the presence of a small entourage of NID Faculty and Bipin Shah the Publisher from Mapin Publishing. A small audience had assembled to hear the talk, which was as usual a rich presentation of images and an impassioned sharing of experiences with the selected women of India who had been featured in his book. The stories were touching as well as inspiring. I introduced Stephen Huyler to the NID audience and spoke about his passion for travel and his long and winding journeys through India that started in 1971 and continues today, and each year he has been in India for three or four months each year, all the time with his camera and recording his experiences of living with the people wherever he went.

Image 03: Stephen Huyler at NID Auditorium on 4 March 2009 for his talk about his book “Daughters of India: Art and Identity”.

Stephen Huyler spoke at length about the book “Daughters of India: Art and Identities” and he illustrated his talk with images and stories of a few of the women featured in his book. The book profiles the lives and art of 20 women he had carefully chosen from a vast range of experiences so as to cover many facets of India across many regions and class barriers while he looked at women and their roles in the Indian sub-continent. Here at NID he chose to speak about Pushpa, who works as a sweeper at Mumbai Airport and lives in the slums next door, and this reminded all of us of the Oscar winning film “Slumdog Millionare” that has caught the attention of the West like none other before it. He also spoke of Indira from Jaisalmeer, Kusima from Badami in Karnataka, Sambai from Ludia in Kachchh in Gujarat and finally about Sonabai from Sarguja District in Chhattisgarh, all touching tales and full of appreciation of both their art and their character that was shaped by the many difficult experiences that they had related to him on his journeys across India.

Bibliographic Data: and link on Amazon and the publishers in the USA, The Abbervile Press and in India, Mapin Publishers Pvt Ltd.
Daughters of India: Art and Identity
Text and Photographs by
Stephen Huyler
Size 9’ x 11 11/16” – Cloth, 264 pages
250 illustrations in full colour
Published by Mapin Publishers Pvt Ltd
ISBN: 978-81-89995-01-0

Prof M P Ranjan

Art Book Centre: Launches “Handmade in India” in Ahmedabad

Art Book Centre: Delivers “Handmade in India” in Ahmedabad

M P Ranjan

Image 1: The Art Book Centre at Madalpur village in Ahmedabad and its founder at the balcony with book jackets and artworks on display.

A quaint and endearing bookstore in Ahmedabad has more titles of books about Indian textiles, art and design than most places that I have seen in India. Located at Madalpur village in the heart of Ahmedabad city in the Ellis Bridge area, it is a specialized bookstore run by a dedicated father and son team who perhaps know more about what has been written about Indian textiles and handicrafts than most scholars of the subject, and this is due to their commitment to locate and collect all available books in their field, old and new, and make them available to those who seek knowledge about Indian textiles, art and handicicrafts. Shri Manohar Patel, founder of the Art Book Centre and his son Shri Ketan Patel are seen at all book exhibitions dealing with art and design books and their first floor bookstore is a feast for the hungry book lovers looking for the subject of Indian art, textiles and handictafts. Accessed through a steep and narrow stairway, their first floor shop is decorated with colourful graphics, Torans (traditional Gujarati buntings) and book jackets from a wide range of publishers, with Mapin taking the lion’s share of shelf space.

Image 2: Aditi Ranjan signing few copies of Handmade at the Art Book Centre with Manohar and Ketan in their shop.

It is therefore no surprise that they were the first to carry stocks of “Handmade in India” and reach them to NID, the local libraries as well as NID faculty and students who have gobbled up the first batch of 100 books that reached them last week. Shri Manohar Patel tells me that he is picking up the next consignment of 100 books later this week, immediately after the long Diwali holidays get over in Ahmedabad. Aditi and I were invited to sign a few books for their regular buyers and collectors who keep in touch with them from all over the world. The Art Book Centre has been around for a long time and it is one of the must visit places in Ahmedabad on the list of most textile design related tourists to the city. They have an interesting and informative website and also respond to emails and can be reached through their contact info provided below. They have a particularly good reputation for mailing books overseas in a good condition but the book is heavy at 3.5 kg apiece and the postage too will be pretty heavy as a result.

Art Book Centre
Specialists in Books on Indian Art and Culture
Madalpur, Nr. Jain Temple, Ellis Bridge,
Ahmedabad – 380 007 INDIA

Email: artbookcenter_2000 (at) yahoo.com
Website: www.artbookcenter.net : Art Book Centre

Image 3: Product information from the previous posts on Design for India as well as the Mapin 2008 Catalogue.

The “Handmade in India” is marketed by Mapin Publishers Pvt Ltd, Ahmedabad on behalf of the COHANDS and the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India who are the publishers of the book. Mapin has included the product details in their recent brochure and the product details are given below.

Handmade in India

Edited by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan

576 pages, 3500 colour photographs and 140 maps,
9.5 x 13.5” (240 x 340 mm), hc,
Weight: 3.5 kg nett
ISBN: 978-81-88204-57-1 (Mapin)
ISBN: 978-81-88204-49-6 (Mapin Series ISBN)
Rs.3,950.00 / US$95.00 /

Image 4: Aditi Ranjan and M P Ranjan at the Art Book Centre signing event on Sunday 2 November 2008.

Download the complete book as pdf file 337 mb size Handmade in India as pdf 337 mb

M P Ranjan

Handmade in India: In book stores before Diwali 2008

Handmade in India: In book stores before Diwali 2008

M P Ranjan

Image: The book release function at Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan on the 21st July 2008. Shri Shankersinh Vaghela, Union Minister for Textiles, Government of India with Sanjay Agarwal, Development Commissioner of Handicrafts (extereme left) and Dr Darlie O Koshy (extreme right) at the book launch function.

I met Bipin Shah of Mapin Publishers at the farewell lunch for Dr Darlie O Koshy that was hosted by the Chairman NID ‘s Governing Council, Mr Salman Hyder on 23rd October 2008 at the Fortune Landmark Hotel in Ahmedabad. He gave me the good news that the book was received very well at the recently concluded Frankfurt Book Fair with an order for 5000 more copies which I presume will be the second print run for the book which had still not hit the stands in India. He was not able to give me any indication of when the first print of 5000 copies would be available to the public since the Development Commissioner of Handictrafts had yet to take a decision on the marketing MOU with Mapin and the first print run that was completed in August 2007 was still lying in godowns in Delhi and in Ahmedabad.

I do not know what happened overnight, since suddenly and out of the blue, the owner of the Art Book Centre in Ahmedabad, Mr N A Patel, arrived dramatically at NID on 24th October 2008 afternoon with 100 copies for sale to faculty and students of the Institute, finally breaking the silence in which the books were lying over the past one year and three months after its printing in Singapore. I hope to hear from both Mapin Publishers as well as from the Development Commissioner of Handictafts on the further availability of the book across bookstores in India, which I hope is quite soon. I tried to check out the Mapin Publishers website but it was a shame that none of the links worked and I hope that they fix that soon. I will report again on this blog when more information comes my way but I am quite relieved to see that at least some copies have found their way to the market after such a long wait. Perhaps NID should offer to carry stocks of the book in our publications department just as we had done for the Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India when the book was not available in any book store in India when it first was released in 1986.

Do look out for the book in a bookstore near you and let me know if you find them on display in your favorite store! This should be a good Diwali after all the carnage on Dalal Street these past few weeks as the Sub-Prime financial panic spreads from the Wall Street to the emerging markets and this is significant since our book is intended to help our living crafts in India and the crafts community here to negotiate this tumultuous change through globalization and pave a way forward for our craftsmen to build a live and vibrant creative economy on the foundation of accessible information which can be our future if we set our mind and policy to realize what is possible with the use of Design in India. The second and third volumes that are still in production as well as the proposed web based initiative to follow all hold the promise of making the Hand crafts of India an accessible resource for the production of goods and services across the world through a creative reinterpretation that would be made possible by direct access to information and people in the days ahead.

The previous posts on the Handmade in India are listed below:

FRIDAY, 25 JULY, 2008
Handmade in India: The team and the mission

SATURDAY, 19 JULY, 2008
Handmade in India: Book Launch in New Delhi

TUESDAY, 22 APRIL, 2008
Design inside Education: Let us start early, for our schools in India

WEDNESDAY, 19 DECEMBER, 2007
WebInnovation2007: Web 2.0 Conference at Bangalore

TUESDAY, 7 AUGUST, 2007
Handmade in India: A Handbook of the Crafts of India arrives from the publisher

Download the complete book here as a pdf file 337 mb size Handmade in India as pdf 337 mb size

M P Ranjan

Design Happenings in Bangalore: Two Weeks at NID Bangalore

Design Happenings in Bangalore: Two Weeks at NID Bangalore
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 1: DCC models about food at NID Bangalore: Climate, Geography and Culture.

I have been in Bangalore, nay Bengaluru now, for over ten days and have been conducting the Design Concepts and Concerns Course (DCC) for students of three disciplines at the NID Bangalore Centre. The theme continues to be food and the assignments have gone through a small transformation. The first assignment had three groups looking at the macro aspects of food and the economy across the broad fields of influence under the heads of Climate, Geography and Culture. The first assignment ended with the three groups having explored the chosen areas through brainstorming and some supporting research ending in the production of a visually rich model that could help in the “visual sensemaking” process as defined by the NextD Leadership Institute.

Image 2: DCC team presentations at NID Bangalore

Each group came up with compelling presentations that revealed a great depth of information carried by the team members and they were all able to produce rich models and make their presentation to the faculty and students at NID Bangalore. The Geography group used a compact model of the continents which revealed both their knowledge as well as their areas of ignorance about the world of food, since the North American and European regions were better represented than the South Americas and the African continent. The climate group divided the world into zones along the longitudes and used one table surface for each zone to capture a picture book of “Poloroid pictures” just as a returning traveler would have shared their vast journeys with their clansmen in the past. The third group had everyone holding their breath with their stunning portrayal of culture using their knowledge of India and the variety of foods and their associations with religious and cultural affiliations. The three dimensional display was well classified and translated into banners each that covered one major category of food and a central display mapped the three major religions that dominate the Indian landscape.

Image: Neelam Chibber with Prof. Ranjan at NID Bangalore and with students of the DCC class.

Neelam Chibber who visited the NID campus briefly to see the bamboo workshop at IPIRTI across the street from the NID campus was quite taken in by the presentation of the culture group and she has commissioned the team to make a refined set of banners about food and culture for her new stores in the now revised Industree Crafts stores that are taking shape in her back office operation of scaling up and diversifying her already successful operation to bring value to Indian crafts at the grassroots level. The Industree Crafts Foundation as well as Industree Crafts Pvt Ltd is being transformed after taking strong roots in Bangalore and I will bring this story to this blog when Neelam is ready with her new and revised offering. Industree Crafts Foundation and the business wing Indistree Crafts Pvt Ltd. works on a Fair Trade principle with over 15,000 village craftsmen across seven states and the Northeastern Region of India and it grew from a small investment of Rs 12 lakhs (1.2 million Rupees) to reach a valuation of over Rs. 15 crores today and growing further by the day. Neelam worked with Gita Ram of the Crafts Council of India and Poonam Bir Kasturi in the early days to nurture a lofty thinking organisation and has shown us that design and social equity can bring good value for all partners. You can download a pdf article about their Fair Play principles from this link as a 688 kb pdf file titled "Fair and Just".

Image 3: Swiss design team conducting a workshop at NID Bangalore

The Swiss design team of industrial designer Frederic Dedelley and design journalist Ariana Pradal conducted a one day sensitizing workshop for all the students at NID Bangalore when they shared the Swiss Design experience through a slide lecture which was followed by a hand-on workshop aimed at creating a designer Letter Opener by direct action on materials and ideas. The evening saw an exciting presentation of over 50 different design offerings which were stimulating and showed the students the dominant design activity of product diversification with the use of micro detailing and form giving that are central to a designers bread and butter operation in their dealings with industry.

Image 4: Guided tour at the Swiss Design exhibit at Bangalore Max Muller Bhavan.

I got to visit the Swiss Design exhibition, Criss+Cross at the Max Muller Bhavan in Indra Nagar and also to take the guided tour offered by Ariana Pradal. I was joined by my daughter, a Bangalore based Graphic Designer, Aparna Ranjan in this very informative tour and later we sat together for a long chat with Frederic Dedelley on various issues and directions in design for India and the world.

Image 5: Bamboo workshop at IPIRTI with Tripura craftsmen for the IL&FS project.

The IPIRITI based bamboo development workshop had nine craftsmen from Tripura along with two of our mastercraftsmen working on my new designs that used a combination of bamboo poles and rubber wood components under the supervision of NID Bangalore faculty and long time bamboo colleague, C S Susanth. The IL&FS team included a supervisor and their senior officer S Matouleibi who manages the field activities of the Tripura Bamboo Mission in Agartala, Tripura. We developed a collection ten new designs with a focus on a “local-to-local strategy”, where we selected products that would have a ready local market in the Tripura region which in turn would facilitate start-up entrepreneurship amongst the bamboo craftsmen who need to develop their self confidence through some mentored development initiatives by the design and finance teams in the field.

Image 6: Visit to Quetzel Design Pvt Ltd

This project and the strategy to use some rubber wood components had me driving all the way across Bangalore from Penea to Sarjapur Road for a visit to Quetzel, a furniture design and manufacturing firm started by two NID graduates, Sandeep Mukherjee and Sarita Fernandes. The company has grown from humble beginnings to be one of the finest furniture manufacturing firms in India that can compete with the international brands that are now entering India across all the parameters of marketing and design. Sandeep and Sarita were both my students in the Furniture Design faculty and NID and I feel quite proud to see their massive and refined industrial venture which has been built at a time when design was ignored by both government and industry alike, which is something that I had called attention to in my paper of 2001 at the first National Design Summit organized by the CII and NID in Bangalore. My paper was titled “Cactus Flowers Bloom on the Dessert” to draw attention to the extremely hostile economic and policy climate in which design was passing through and things have not changed much even today, although we have come a long way as a profession today, but no thanks to either the government and to the established industry, who have steadfastly ignored the design community in India while they have run after international collaborations at a huge cost to our economy and to the tax payer alike. Download paper here 123 kb pdf file and visual presentation here in two parts: Part 1 – 3.6 mb pdf file and Part 2 – 4.6 mb pdf file

Image 7: Visit to Trapeze Design Studio at Koramangala

On our return from our long drive to Quetzel and back I took Matouleibi to visit Trapeze, a graphic design studio at Koramangala which was set up by two NID graduates, Sarita Sunder and Ram Sinam. An exciting small studio with a row of Macs on one side and an impromptu photo studio and a table tennis facility on the other. Trapeze has an impressive range of clients from across several sectors and their work in print and web design has set standards for Indian graphic design industry in spite of their small and cozy studio size and very personalized format of operation.

Image 8: Book launch function at Crosswords for Dr Darlie O Koshy and his book “Indian Design Edge”.

The week closed with another interesting event which I will write about in some detail in a future post since it will need the time and space to read, reflect and comment about, in a balanced manner, if possible. This event was the launch of the new book, “Indian Design Edge” by Dr Darlie O Koshy, Director, National Institute of Design through the Roli Books Publishers at an evening event at Crosswords Bookstore on Residency Road, Bangalore. The event saw the main speaker Dr Sadagopan, Director IIIT, Bangalore (Tripple IT Bangalore) wax and wane about the virtues of design from the aesthetics to the usability of the Apple iPhone and his profuse praise for Dr Koshy’s many achievements in his 8 year long career at NID as its Executive Director for the first five years and later as its Director for the past three years after a terminiology change that has left us all puzzled if it is a move forward for NID or not. I bought three copies of the book for myself, my wife Aditi Ranjan and my daughter Aparna Ranjan so that all of us designers could come up to steam quickly on Dr Koshy’s offering to the design publishing space in India, which by the way is very starved of any kind of serious publishing and this particular offering will be lapped up by the much starved Indian and international design public, I am sure. Dr Koshy is also a Board Member of ICSID, the International Council of Societies Industrial Design, and by the way my blog “Design for India” has been showcased by the ICSID blog in the education section last month particularly for the Tata Nano debate that it had hosted when the product was launched with much fanfare early this year. Ratan Tata has written the Forward for Dr Koshy’s book and the Tata Nano appears on the dust jacket as well as on the contents page of the book as a symbol of Indian design success.

Image 9: Visitors at the book launch function at Crosswords, Bangalore

There was a bash across the street from Crosswords organized by a local fashion group to falicitate Dr Koshy on his publishing achievement but I did not gate-crash this bash at the Taj Gateway but chose to have a quiet dinner with my daughter Aparna along with two very interesting young designers from France and Germany, two girls who have chosen to work in India since it offers them real challenges unlike the well established and stable design climate in Europe today. We sat a Coconut Grove and got a sense of what foreign designers liked in India and how they had coped with the challenges of Indian living, both rode mobikes in Bangalore and have worked for over two years in a umber of very interesting assignments here in Bangalore. I am sure India can accommodate may more such international adventurers in the 230 sectors of our economy that is today starved of design offerings due to policy myopia in government and in industry. The design scene in India is indeed changing rapidly and this si an exciting time to be working in and in writing about design for India. Mireille Arnaud, the girl from France, is working with some stone craftsmen from a village called Shivarapatna in Karnataka and she has helped them build contemporary concepts that can take their skills to new markets in India and overseas. This is the kind of cooperation that we had envisaged when Aditi and I had embarked on the research for the book “Handmade in India” in conversations with Jogi Panghaal one of our prominent collaborators and several of our faculty colleagues at NID. India can offer creative opportunities of Indian and international designers to work closely with Indian craftsmen to build a creative economy which could be the future for many of the Indian crafts if our policy initiatives are managed in the right direction. On the other hand, Christina Hug from Germany, is working as a creative director in a local design firm with her focus on graphics and communication having traveled to India after field experiences with the Greenpeace Foundation in many countries.

This week I get back to NID Ahmedabad with a good feel from Bangalore since so much has happened the past ten days and the stay was useful and productive. I look forward to returning soon to Bangalore, the city of Rain Tree avenues and a still wonderful climate, if we manage to keep it that way, Nano or no Nano!


Prof M P Ranjan

Handmade in India: The team and the mission

Image: Book Launch function at the Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan, New Delhi presided on by Shri Shankarsinh Vaghela, the Honourable Minister of Textiles, Government of India.

This project was handled at the National Institute of Design from early 2002 when the proposal was drafted by the NID team and it went through many phases of research and design till the book was finally in print by the end of August 2007. However the book release was delayed for various reasons but we now hope that the sale and distribution copies will be available widely in India and overseas through the Mapin Publishing network as well as the Office of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India. The list of people involved in the various stages of work and on various aspects of its creation are listed on pages 562 and 563 of the book and this list is reproduced below for the blog post here.

Besides these contributors listed in the Credits pages we have listed a full set of implicit contributors in the form of an Annotated Bibliography from pages 551 to 556 covering the numerous crafts documentations studies done at NID over the past 40 years that have been a foundation on which this particular structure has been built for the production of this publication. Further, pages 558 to 560 has a list of all field contributors with whom our teams had interacted and drawn support from during the elaborate field work phase that was done over the four years when the content was being compiled and verified through forays in the field. Page 561 has a list of all Museums and private collections from which images or samples were referred for filling in some of the material that has appeared in the book. The bibliography and list of useful websites are listed in pages 556 and 557. We do hope that much of the material in the book will appear as part of the proposed web portal that is planned as phase four of this very interesting project in the days ahead. This would be modeled after the emerging web 2.0 paradigm and be an interactive platform that can assist our vast crafts community to connect with the world in new and exciting ways. This would be the foundation for the growth of the creative economy of the future that is based on the enormous crafts skills of India that we hope will be strengthened as we move forward from here.

Image: Screen Capture of the Credits page from Handmade in India. The full text is listed below.

Credits

Concept and Structure :
Aditi Ranjan, M P Ranjan & Jogi Panghaal

Editors: Aditi Ranjan, M P Ranjan

Preliminary Research: M P Ranjan, Jogi Panghaal, Kuntal De, Jonak Das, Mushtak Khan, Aditi Ranjan, Navrang Panchal

Library and Archival Research: Bhavneet Kaur, Archana Vidwans, Anuradha Nambiar, Vellachi Ramanathan, Deepa Varia, Nikita Mehta, Priyanka Bhattacharya, Vinutha Mallya, Sushma Shetty Sreenath, Aratrik Devvarman, Pooja Jha, Arghya Sinha Roy, M P Ranjan, Aditi Ranjan, Sangita Shroff, Zenobia Zamindar, Poorvi Das, Shankar Natarajan, Tush Singh

Technical Glossary: P Ramakrishna Rao, M P Ranjan, Gunjan Singh, Kuntal De, Aditi Ranjan

Index & Resource Mapping: M P Ranjan, Aditi Ranjan, Pooja Jha, Arghya Sinha Roy, Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen

Annotated Bibliography: Swadha Majumdar, Mann Singh, Aditi Ranjan, Nirmala Khadpekar

Copy Editing: Anuradha Nambiar, Sushma S Shetty, Paulomi Das, Priyanka Bhattacharya, Vinutha Mallya, Archana Vidwans, Diana Romany, Sushmita De

Proof Reading: Diana Romany, Vinutha Mallya

Book Design — Zenobia Zamindar, Girish Arora
Book Design Feedback: Subrato Bhowmick, Siddhartha Ghosh, Mookesh Patel, Mahendra Patel, S M Shah, Vikas Satwalekar, Anand Naorem, Uzma Mohsin, Devashish Bhattacharya, Bipin Shah, Paulomi Shah, Rajesh Dahiya

Photography Management: Deepak John Matthew, NID Photography Department, Girish Arora, Zenobia Zamindar, Navrang Panchal, Kinjal Popat, M P Ranjan

Assistance for Book Cover: Mona Gonsai, Neelakash Singh, Aparna Ranjan

Design Assistance: Krupa Kapadia, Kinjal Popat, Navrang Panchal, Keyur Payghode, Umesh Patel, Kajal Savalia, Rajorshi Ghosh, Jhumur Roy, Mehul Ruparel, Kapil Agarwal, Aparna Ranjan, Parinita Purohit, M R Patel, Shirish Shah, Suresh Modia

Proofing Assistance: Pragathi Offset Pvt Ltd., Hyderabad, Patel Printing Press, Ahmdedabad, Repro Scan, Mumbai

Field Research
NORTH:
Chandigarh: Divya Lahoria, Bhavneet Kaur
Delhi: Anuradha Nambiar, Shaurya Kumar, Amit Jain, Jonak Das, Kuntal De, Bhavneet Kaur, P. Alexander
Haryana: Sumit Saini, Ravinder Sirohiya, Bhavneet Kaur
Himachal Pradesh: Sandeep Trichal, Malhar Dhruv,
Shaswaty Nair, Paromita Banerjee
Jammu and Kashmir: Minali Singh, Sucharita Beniwal, Sharon Vellane, V Bhaskar, Mustafa Merchant, Chinar Farooqui, Farah Deba, Sandeep Trichal, Anuradha Nambiar
Punjab: Bhavneet Kaur, Divya Lahoria
Rajasthan: Anuradha Nambiar, Swasti Singh Ghai, Amit Jain, Poorvi Das, Chinar Farooqui, Errol Pires

CENTRE:
Uttar Pradesh: Bhavneet Kaur, Biswajit Hazra, Anupama Srivastava, Shantanu Jena
Uttaranchal: Praveen Nahar, Dhriti Dhoundiyal, Manish Pillewar, Sandeep Paul, Ashish Chaudhary, Bishakha Shome

EAST:
Bihar: Amit Jain, Sandeep Trichal
Jharkhand: Shaurya Kumar, Amit Jain
Orissa: Shaurya Kumar, Kadambari Misra, Amit Jain
Sikkim: Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen, Shweta Jain,
West Bengal: Jonak Das, Anirban Dutta Gupta, Dhrujoti Prasad Bhattacharya, Vydianathan R, Ramu Aravindan

SOUTH:
Andhra Pradesh: Vellachi Ramanathan, Sandeep Sangaru, Munir Vahanvati, Satish Nagendra, Kurma Rao
Karnataka: Hema Mathew, Jogi Panghaal, Mayura Ingle, Shashikala, Accessory Design, NIFT Bangalore: Tanveer Ratti, Vivek Saurabh, Lalan Parikh, Sanskruti Thorat, Sandeep Pradhan, Sanil Dhadwal, Shwetnisha Bansal Swagata Sarkar, Bibin Phillips, Abul Quasim, Saurav Kumar, Kadhambini Majhee, Divya Sanwaiya, Shika Agarwal, Vinay Kumar
Kerala: Anuradha Nambiar, Nikita Mehta, Kritika Malhotra, Ashokan Poduval
Pondicherry: Shankar Natarajan, Vellachi Ramanathan, Subhashree Karthik
Tamil Nadu: Shankar Natarajan, Shriya Sridharan, Hema Mathew, Vellachi Ramanathan, Ambika Sambasivan, Subhashree Karthik, Akhila Krishnan

WEST:
Chhattisgarh: Nityan Unnikrishnan, Rukmini Guha Thakurta
Dadra & Nagar Haveli: Nikita Mehta, Shehzad Irani
Daman & Diu: Nikita Mehta, Shehzad Irani, Vaishnavi Murthy
Goa: Aratrik Devvarman, Minali Singh
Gujarat: Nikita Mehta, Virsingh Kawar Chhatri, Purvi Mehta, Shehzad Irani, Malhar Dhruv, Deepa Varia, Yasoda Ramesh, Jyoti Sharma, Sumita Chaudhary, Rekha Meena, Jigisha Patel, Aratrik Devvarman
Madhya Pradesh: R Umamaheshwaran, Abhinav Baluni, Yasoda Ramesh, Jyoti Sharma, Shruti Phagre
Maharashtra: Nikita Mehta, Nirmal Jain, Milind Risaldar, Komal Khankhoje, Ketna Contractor, Chandrashekhar Bhadve

NORTHEAST:
Arunachal Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya
Assam: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya, Sukanya Sanyal
Manipur: Mriganka Madhukaillya, Sukumar Haobam,
Ramu Aravindan
Meghalaya: Mehul Vadher, Shalini Sahoo
Mizoram: Deborah Zama, Priya Dhar, Rupali Rudra
Nagaland: Ramu Aravindan, Mriganka Madhukaillya
Tripura: M P Ranjan, Sandeep Sangaru, Dimple Soni, Shimolee Nahar, Nibha Jain, Aratrik Devvarman

Photography Credits
NORTH:
Delhi: Shailen Parker, Sudeep Chaudhury, Amit Jain, M F Jadliwala
Haryana: Ravinder Sirohiya
Himachal Pradesh: Malhar Dhruv, Shaswaty Nair, Paromita Banerjee
Jammu and Kashmir: Malhar Dhruv, Chinar Farooqui, Farah Deba, Minali Singh, V Bhaskar, Sharon Vellane, Sucharita Beniwal, Sundeep Sangaru
Punjab: Divya Lahoria
Rajasthan: Amit Jain, Bhagawan Das, Ashok Kumar Suthar, Sohan Lal, Rani Dan Joshi, Sunil Rakecha, Errol Pires, M F Jadliwala, Poorvi Das, Girish Arora, Sandeep Sangaru

CENTRE:
Uttar Pradesh: Biswajit Hajra
Uttranchal: Praveen Nahar, Manish Pillewar, Dhriti Dhaundiyal, Sandeep Paul, Ashish Chaudhary

EAST:
Bihar: Amit Jain, Anil Sinha
Jharkhand: Amit Jain
Orissa: Amit Jain, Kadmabari Misra, Ramu Aravindan
Sikkim: Sonam Tashi Gyaltsen, Shweta Jain, Karma Sonam
West Bengal: Ramu Aravindan, Anirban Dutta Gupta, Jonak Das, Jitendra Arora

SOUTH:
Andhra Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan, Munir Vahanvati, Sandeep Sangaru, Satish Nagendra
Karnataka: Ramu Aravindan, Hema Mathew, Mayura Ingle, M P Ranjan, Jogi Panghaal, Divya Sanwaya, Vinay Kumar, Lalan Parikh, Sandeep Pradhan, Shwetnisha Bansal, Bibin Philips, Saurav Kumar
Kerala: Kritika Malhotra, Ramu Aravindan, Ashokan Poduval, Sushanth C S
Pondicherry: Shankar Natarajan, Subhashree Karthik, Krishna Priya
Tamil Nadu: Ramu Aravindan, Shankar Natarajan, Hema Mathew, S Jayachandran, N Prassana Kumar, Krishna Priya, Akhila Krishnan, Subhashree Karthik, Ambika Sambasivan

WEST:
Chhattisgarh: Rukmini Guja Thakurta, Mushtak Khan, Jogi Panghaal, Rajni Srivastava, Shaila Kunhu
Dadra & Nagar Haveli: Shehzad Irani
Daman & Diu: Shehzad Irani, Vaishnavi Murthy
Goa: Minali Singh
Gujarat: Deepak John Matthew, Shehzad Irani, Malhar Dhruv, Munir Vahanvati, Purvi Mehta, Jigisha Patel, Rekha Meena, Aratrik Devvarman, Shankar Natarajan, Zenobia Zamindar
Madhya Pradesh: Abhinav Baluni, Jyoti Sharma, Yasoda
Ramesh, Mushtak Khan, Pooja Jha
Maharashtra: Chandrashekhar Bhadve, Ketna Contractor, Nirmal Jain, Poorvi Das, Navleen Singh

NORTHEAST:
Arunachal Pradesh: Ramu Aravindan
Assam: Ramu Aravindan, M P Ranjan, Saleem Bhatri, Amogh Chaugule, Deven Jamsandhekar, Kiran Katbamna
Manipur: Ramu Aravindan, Rupali Rudra, Aratrik Dev Varman
Meghalaya: Mehul Vadher, Shalini Sahoo, M P Ranjan
Mizoram: Deborah Zama
Nagaland: Ramu Aravindan
Tripura: M P Ranjan, Sandeep Sangaru, Dimple Soni, Aratrik Devvarman, Shimolee Nahar, Nibha Jain

NID Archives

Photographers
Deepak John Mathew: Architecture, Landscape
Jogi Panghaal: Kantha Textiles
Suranjana Satwalekar: Crafts, Textiles, Varanasi, Arunachal, Cherrapunji, Pithora Painting
Subrato Bhowmick: Prayer Rugs, Nirmal Toys
Nilam Iyer, M P Ranjan, Ghanshyam Pandya: Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India
P M Dalwadi: Manipur Pavilion
Rajesh Vora: Stucco Work, Madurai
S Balaram and Anuj Sharma: Palm Leaf Craft, Chennai
Padmini Balaram: Kalamkari
Swasti Singh: Meghwal Embroidery

Photographs from student Craft Documentations
Scanning
Bharat Suthar, Rajendra Patel, Umesh Patel, Dhawal Gajjar
Assistance
T S Rajendran, Chirantan Raval, Himanshu Mistry, Jayesh Leuva, Praveen Varia, Jayesh Parmar, Suresh Modia, Cromwel Parmar, Reena Narendran, Gopalan Nambiar, Divya Nair
Knowledge Management Centre:
S D Bodiwala, Swadha Majumdar, Himmat Singh, Anil Patel, Sangeeta Vyas and Staff

NID Project Administration and Financial Management
Darlie O Koshy, Executive Director, NID
Akhil Succena, Chairman Outreach (Former)
Shashank Mehta, Chairman Outreach
Aditi Ranjan, Project Head
Brahmanand Pani, Controller of Accounts
K K Bhaskaran, Project Manager
NID Delhi Centre: N V K Murthy, P Alexander, V A Anthony
NID Bangalore Centre: Shashikala Satyamoorthy, T S Nagarajan and Shaktivel, Hyderabad

Client Project Administration and Financial Management
S B Mohapatra, IAS, Secretary, Ministry of Textiles
Tinoo Joshi, IAS, Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
V P Thakur, Executive Director, Council of Handicrafts Development Corporation (COHANDS)
Susheel Kumar, IAS, Additional Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
Sandeep Srivastava, IAS, Additional Development Commissioner (Handicrafts)
Mushtak Khan, Deputy Director, Crafts Museum, Delhi
Durgesh Shankar, Chairman and Managing Director, CCIC, New Delhi

Credit acknowledgement is also due to the unnamed students and faculty members at the National Institute of Design who have helped in putting this book together through their lively interactions and occasional contributions.

We would like to acknowledge the offices of DC(H) across India, who supported and facilitated the field research. Further Regional Directors and Assistant Directors of Marketing & Extension Centres (named below) and their respective colleagues (too numerous to be listed here) helped put together a comprehensive check list of resources in and around their respective centers in a collective effort called Panorama Series, 2002, which was used as a base document for field work.

Regional Directors & Assistant Directors of Marketing & Extension Centres:
S Bhattacharya, Kolkata
B C Mohapatra, Gangtok, Siliguri
P Sasany, Sambalpur & Bhubaneshwar
R S Yadav, Deogarh
A K Saran, Madhubani
S P Moitra, Ranchi
A K Handoo, Lucknow
S C Bhardwaj, Agra
Amar Chand, Saharanpur
C B Singh, Barabanki
Mangala Singh, Varanasi
S S Gwal, Almora
S K Sinha, Mumbai
S V Deshpande, Indore
V Baskaran, Surat
A T Meshram, Nagpur
I G Kawre, Jagdalpur
T R Gajbhai, Kolhapur
S Z Hussain, Aurangabad
Kali Ram, Gwalior
A C Gangal, Panaji
P Sundramurty, Chennai
S C Deveramani, Mangalore, Mysore
Abdul Kader, Port Blair
G R Thampi, Nagercoil
R Chandran, Salem
S Gurumurty, Pondicherry
I H P Rao, Tirupati, Vijaywada
V Bhaskaran, Trichur
G George, Thiruvananthapuram
S A Razzack, Hyderabad
A K Handoo, New Delhi
V K Mahajan, Hoshiarpur
S L Dangayach, Jaipur
B L Meena, Jodhpur
Jagdish Prasad, Rewari
S K Tikoo, Kullu
Tajumal Hussain, Srinagar & Baramulla
M K Kaw, Leh
T K Kaul, Udhampur & Jammu
A R Chaudhary, Guwahati
S R Masram, Agartala
P C Dutta, Aizawl & Gauripur
S B Singh, Jorhat
S Z Hussain, Imphal
S B Singh, Kohima
S Dkhar, Shillong

Handmade in India: Book Launch in New Delhi

Handmade in India
Edited by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan
Book design by Ms. Zenobia Zamindar and Girish Arora.
576 pages, 3500 colour photographs and 140 maps, 9.5 x 13.5” (240 x 340 mm)
End matter includes a Technical Glossary, Annotated Bibliography, Craft Categories, an Index and also a detailed Acknowledgement and Credits.
Co-published in association with COHANDS and Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, the book is produced by Mapin.

Image: Front and back cover of the new book and one sample page from the Rajasthan section dealing with the Ajmer metacluster. The book is to be released for the public on the 21st of July 2008 at a brief function at the Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan on Baba Kharakh Singh Marg, New Delhi by , Shri Shankarsinh Vaghela, Honorable Minister of Textiles, Government of India. The book is distributed by Mapin and will be widely available in bookstores in India and overseas.

Handmade in India, An encyclopedia of the crafts of India is a tribute to the Indian craftsperson and is organized by the geographical distribution of the crafts across all states and regions of the country. The Indian craftsperson has demonstrated an uncanny understanding of materials which is combined with a mastery of the tools, techniques and processes that have evolved over the centuries through social and cultural interactions, a tribute to the creative design abilities of the village society. The Eames India Report talks about a search for the values that is uniquely Indian and it is here that the study of Indian crafts will help inform current and future actions in the continuous evolution of the economy and the form that it takes in shaping the culture of the land. Today this craft continuum constitutes an enormous resource that can be harnessed for the future development of our society, particularly as the backbone of a creative economy that is enabled by the embedded knowledge in the traditional wisdom of the sector as well as the digital technologies that help connect this ancient skill to new and future opportunities for the craftspersons across India. We will need to make this enormous knowledge base accessible to planners, business and the rural and urban craftsmen as well as connect these to new local and global opportunities for these skills and resources to be reinterpreted in imaginative ways.

Image: Sample pages from the Rajasthan section. Each section has a master State page which is followed by the Meta-cluster pages and in each of these are the Crafts pages. Shown above are the State double page spread (top left), the Jaipur meta-cluster spread and the Blue Pottery craft (top right), the Ajmer metacluster spread with the crafts of Phad painting and Miniature painting on wood (bottom left) and finally the double spread that includes the crafts of Mojari making, handmade paper, felt products and the Bahi – the clothbound book crafts of Rajasthan.

These examples, we believe are some of the foundations of the creative economy of the future in a web enabled world and easy access in both directions which promises to link the craftsmen to new markets across the world. For this scenario to happen there are several steps involved and the book will be the first in offering insights and data on this vast resource as well as be a vehicle that can provide a platform and a structure to enhance this knowledge. Using the new digital networks and tools of access and interaction that it provides, this knowledge can be put to good use provided the required investments are made in infrastructure and training to realize this inherent potential. It is our intention that the information as well as the framework of situated keywords provided in this book will help all concerned with the promotion, development and use of the crafts of India and that they would be empowered to build a sustainable network of live information. This we believe will help our craftsmen re-connect with world markets, just as they had been doing for centuries in their own village and in their trade route networks of the past, and now the world can be their new village economy, if they are enabled and empowered to change, to meet these new circumstances with access to information that is both live and relevant.

Image: Two models that were prepared in the early 90’s to capture the scope and intentions for the promotion of the crafts sector in Rajasthan and across the rest of India which led to the setting up of the IICD, Jaipur. We were asked to imagine and envision the format and scope of the new Institute for Crafts in Jaipur and today this is an active centre for the creation of change agents hwo are capable of working in the transformation of the crafts sector in India. We will need more such initiatives in the future in India.

“Handmade in India”, is the first of three books, in the series Crafts of India, that are planned. It provides a geographic organization of craft distributed across the length and breadth of the country and shows how craft permeates even the remotest corner of India. It is a confirmation of more that 40 years of effort by faculty and students of the National Institute of Design who have sustained their interest in the crafts of India as a design and development resource for the country when few other organizations showed real interest in what was seen as a glory of the past. That it is a living resource as well as a resource for the future is something that we would strongly advocate and call for sustained investments from both government and industry to ensure its continuity. The realization that it can steer the creative economy for the benefit of an estimated six million crafts persons is a real possibility. These craftspersons have kept this knowledge alive in a tacit living form through their actions and traditional methods of transmission which we are now trying to capture in an explicit format between the covers of a book.

Image: A small collection of colourful toys from a variety of materials by Indian craftsmen from many locations that are featured in the book.

We have had thinkers from the past comparing the crafts of India with the oceans of the world, vast and impossible to put into a bottle of any kind. We are very aware that it is only the whole earth and its gravity that can act as an adequate container for the oceans and water bodies of our planet’s ecology. Our crafts traditions and practices can be compared to this vast ocean and it is only the tips of the ice-berg that are visible in the book and we hope that the web and the digital networks that are built in the subsequent phases can support and play the role of making the rest of the hidden volume visible and accessible in the days ahead. It is a pleasure to see the realization of a dream and the fructification of the efforts of several generations of NID designers as well as a large team of contributors who have made this book possible. With sustained support from our sponsors The Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, the COHANDS, and the expertise of Mapin Publishers as well the members of our Institute, the National Institute of Design this product is a reality today. They have provided us the opportunity of producing this work and we look forward to an active period of cooperation in taking this forward to the next stages through books two, three and beyond on the web as a major portal for the Handicrafts of India.

Aditi Ranjan & M P Ranjan
Editors: Handmade in India
National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India
19 July 2008

For further information contact:

The Council of Handicraft Development Corporations (COHANDS), New Delhi.
Email: cohands4 (at) vsnl.net

The Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Government of India, Ministry of Textiles, R K Puram, New Delhi
Email: dchejs (at) nic.in

National Institute of Design, Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007, Gujarat
Email: outreach (at) nid.edu

Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Usmanpura, Ahmedabad 380014
Email: mapin (at) mapinpub.com

Design inside Education: Let us start early, for our schools in India

Image: School children visiting NID seen at the Gautam-Gira Square holding hands around the Big Tree at my suggestion.

Design inside Education: Let us start early, in all our schools in India
Yesterday we had a group of very young visitors, all from one school in Ahmedabad, The St Mary’s School, one of the better known schools of Ahmedabad. I saw all the students walking in single file, hands tucked firmly at the back lest they got into some kind of trouble, and being proper young school kids, while taking a tour of the National Institute of Design at our Paldi campus. I met them near my office and was struck by the strict discipline and wondered about the state of education in India. What would it be like to put design inside this education?

I recalled a lecture that I had delivered a few years ago at the conference titled Indian Crafts: The Future in a Globalising World, held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India on 25th and 26th November 2005. The paper was based on the one I had penned for publication in the much delayed Volume Two of the Handmade in India. Volume One is printed and lying in a godown at the Office of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts for the past 8 months, but that is another story. My paper was titled “Craftsmanship in Education: Towards a Creative India in the Knowledge Economy“ (161 kb word file) the full text version can be downloaded from this link here.

The issues that I had raised are captured in the three tables that I had presented at the conference and these represent my analysis of the education situation in India and we see that the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Education are bending over backwards to spread this kind of education to all our rural areas which have so far been spared the deleterious effects of such a formal education in our country. However the long arms of the planned education system are reaching out and they promise to snuff out the traditional systems of learning that has existed in our countryside for many centuries of active involvement of children and adolescents in the crafts and agricultural trades, now called child labour, and therefore looked down upon.

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

The NCERT ( The National Centre for Education Research and Training, New Delhi) has recently set up a National level committee to look at the introduction of Crafts as a subject of study in the school curriculum and the work has been progressing towards the implementation of their suggestions in the coming years in schools across India. When will design attract such attention and be brought into the school curriculum? We have the National Design Policy in place since the beginning of 2007 but there is no mention of school education in that agenda and that situation needs to change quickly. I wonder, when and how.

Image: Slide from the IDSA lecture on education the Design Way.

In my lecture at the IDSA 2006 in Austin, Texas I had stressed on the need to review education in the light of new findings about human motor skills and their association with learning as captured by the Homunculus as offered to us by Dr Wilder Penfield in the image above. We do need to find the Design Way and bring it into school education, sooner the better. The text summary paper (42 kb word file) and visual presentation (pdf 812 kb) titled “Giving Design back to the People: Towards a Post-mining Economy,”can be downloaded from here.

Image: Models created by a student group looking at the theme of Design inside Education in the DCC course.

While keeping these needs in mind, last year I had assigned the theme of “Putting Design Inside Education” as part of our Design Concepts and Concerns course for the Foundation students and for the Post Graduate students we had the theme of “Creative Industries of the Future”, both of which impinged upon sustained changes in the school level curriculum to include design learning and action at the very core of the educational processes in our schools across India. We need to make that happen, sooner than later, if we are to create leadership in a globalised economy and I do hope we are able to move towards a more design and innovation informed educational system across India, particularly for our rural children who I believe will be hugely disadvantaged by the current form of education if it is taken to the villages without some thought and revisions.

WebInnovation2007: Web 2.0 Conference at Bangalore

A well-attended two-day conference at the Ashoka Grand in Bangalore with 750 professionals from the Information Technology sector included engineers, marketing executives and designers, all eager to understand and appreciate the various dimensions of the emerging Web 2.0 paradigm. Rupesh Vyas and I made a presentation that explored many opportunities for Web 2.0 applications that we see in India and in our presentation we focused on grassroots level explorations that had been initiated in our classroom projects at the NID and those that could be taken forward with real impact to a huge user base across India. The presentation titled “User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India” defined design as we now understand it, an activity where human intentions mediated with thoughts and actions are used to produce value, great value.

Image: Study of Sahpur is offered as an opportunity for the use of Web 2.0 approaches to connect villagers in the Indian sub-continent to map local resources and aspirations for development initiatives across India.
The whole morning session was dominated by discussions on how the business sectors dealing with Web 2.0 could indeed generate revenue streams. It almost seemed that the speakers and the audience were obsessed with how anyone could create community and use this to create a monetized value for himself or herself. Little discussion on what could be done but much on how and how much, very disheartening indeed. The keynotes too kept returning to the concept of making money and the difficulty faced by web based companies in retaining their hard earned leadership in a highly competitive space. Perhaps the industry should try and focus on what can be done in India at the grassroots where it is needed the most and the value generated would create wealth for all of us across the country.

Image: Project INFARM done in 1995 as part of the Apple Design initiative is offered as an example of farmers as users of rich Web 2.0 applications in India.
In my presentation I talked of the Web 2.0 as being a new mind-set rather than a new technology, although many new technological as well as business processes can be listed as part of this new and emerging paradigm. However at the core it is for me about people working together on a spirit of sharing and this has less to do with many of the concerns of the industrial economy and even he knowledge economy as we have come to understand it today. We need a new attitude to understand the offerings that are springing up all around us in the form and shape of the Web 2.0 economy, or should we use another term to describe this phenomenon that is perplexing all of us who are trying to make sense of the emerging paradigm.

Image: The Heritage Walk in Ahmedabad as a opportunity for creative mapping of our cities by students using GeoVisualisation tools to create citizen generated content and rich local knowledge sharing that can create value for tourists as well as visitors to the city.
Thinking about the evolution of human ideas while sitting in the conference it did cross my mind that we have evolved from the hunter gatherer era when fire and tools gave humans an edge over other species on our planet. The settled agriculture era saw the rise of land holding as our currency and measure of wealth and this also spawned the zamindari attitudes and created the nobles and commoners. The smokestack industries were built on mined minerals and energy from fossil fuels. Land, minerals and finance formed the backbone of the economy till this was disrupted by the hi-tech industries that used knowledge and technology as the prime drivers of the economy. The emergence of the web and the internet opened a new space for creative disruption and the brick and mortar establishments had to give way to the dematerialized economy where finance flowed through electronic networks and crossed national borders at will. We have now arrived at another disruption and suddenly concentration of wealth of the previous eras is being challenged by individual content creators and a new paradigm is needed to explain the open source characteristics of Web 2.0 and I think that we will need a new mind set to understand what this has in store for all of us. Surely creative sharing will be the driver of the web 2.0 era that is almost on us as we blog and share and build new applications that can accommodate all of us and our needs like never before.

Image: Handmade in India as a database that could bring Indian craftsmen on to a Web 2.0 platform as part of the creative economy of the future.
The four case examples that we used in our presentation called for design action starting from a deep study of user needs and aspirations and the users included villagers, farmers, students and craftsmen across India, who are all unusual subjects for a Web 2.0 initiative. However we believe that it is do-able if we can put together multi-disciplinary teams that can work closely with each user group and help build prototypes and concepts that can be refined and delivered in each of the sectors in which action is required. These cases are only indicative of what kinds of opportunities that we see in India and the scale of what is possible is indeed staggering. The details of the WebInnovation2007 Conference is available at this web link above and our presentation titled User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India is a PDF file which can be downloaded from this link as a 2.2 mb file. The abstract of the presentation is quoted below.

Abstract of Paper and Visual presentation to the Web Innovation Conference, Bangalore in December 2007

User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India

Prof. M P Ranjan
Chairman, Geovisualisation Task Group, DST, Govt. of India
Faculty of Design
National Institute of Design

Rupesh Vyas
Faculty of Design
Coordinator Information Design Discipline
National Institute of Design

India lives in many centuries and the rapid strides of development are impacting the lives of all of us particularly those who live and work in the rural sectors of our economy. It is here that most of our people live and perhaps where we should be making an effort to impact through a concerted impetus of design to make to make the tools and processes accessible to the people who need it the most.

How do we achieve this when the tools and technology have been held and operated by educated and urban oriented individuals and institutions for all these years? This is perhaps where design imagination and technological commitment can create new avenues for the application of these innovative tools and techniques in a democratic and ubiquitous manner all over our land. Is this a just in theory and like a distant dream or can or become a reality? Can we demonstrate this possibility in a few significant case studies so that it evokes a sense of commitment across the country to use these now widely available resources particularly in an IT enabled manner?

Can the emerging understanding of what is Web 2.0 create a platform of collaborators across disciplines to achieve what many institutions and Governments cannot do on their own? We believe that the time is right to take the technologies to the people and that we operate it in a bottom up approach with imagination and commitment to achieve what needs to be done. Do we know what is needed? Perhaps even here we will once again go to the bottom of the value chain and use the tools of co-creation to work our way back to new and exciting offerings that can transform our national, regional and local economies, one step at a time.

In this paper we will show that many new applications are indeed possible and these would cover the hitherto ignored areas of application in a participatory manner. This should make it both usable and relevant to the local conditions and meet the aspirations of the people whom it is to serve. Some suggestions have been made using examples of classroom and research projects conducted by the students and faculty of the National Institute of Design to show how these tools and knowledge domains in the area of Web based communication and exchange can be applied to new and interesting applications. This would establish that we can reach far into our rural hinterland and show that these could become a mission that would be achieved through active user participation to address local needs and aspirations in a variety of critical areas of application.

These could be called design opportunities since the intention is to add value to the local situation through making the information and knowledge both usable as well as accessible to the users in their own domains is a starting point for the design journey. With partners from technology and the user base much can be achieved which was hitherto not attempted. This is an invitation to imagination of what could be and not what is; do join us in this journey.

Handmade in India: A Handbook of the Crafts of India arrives from the publisher

Handmade in India: An encyclopedia of the handicrafts of India

Handmade in India
Edited by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan
576 pages, 3500 colour photographs and 140 maps, 9.5 x 13.5” (240 x 340 mm), hc, October 2007, ISBN: 978-81-88204-57-1 (Mapin), Series ISBN: 978-81-88204-49-6 (Mapin), Copublished in association with COHANDS
Rs.3,950.00 / US$95.00
more about availability in October 2007
from the Mapin Publishers Pvt. Ltd. link here

Handmade in India, volume 1, is a tribute to the Indian craftsperson and is organized by the geographical distribution of the crafts across all states and regions of the country. The Indian craftsperson has demonstrated an uncanny understanding of materials which is combined with a mastery of the tools, techniques and processes that have evolved over the centuries through social and cultural interactions, a tribute to the creative design abilities of the village society. The Eames India Report talks about a search for the values that is uniquely Indian and it is here that the study of Indian crafts will help inform current and future actions in the continuous evolution of the economy and the form that it takes in shaping the culture of the land. Today this craft continuum constitutes an enormous resource that can be harnessed for the future development of our society, particularly as the backbone of a creative economy that is enabled by the embedded knowledge in the traditional wisdom of the sector as well as the digital technologies that help connect this ancient skill to new and future opportunities for the craftspersons across India. We will need to make this enormous knowledge base accessible to planners, business and the rural and urban craftsmen as well as connect these to new local and global opportunities for these skills and resources to be reinterpreted in new and imaginative ways.


Sample page showing a typical craft and associated images, text and keywords

This we believe is the foundation of the creative economy of the future in a massively web enabled world and easy access in both directions which promises to link the craftsmen to new markets across the world. For this to happen there are several steps involved and the book will be the first in offering insights and data on this vast resource as well as be a vehicle that can provide a platform and a structure to enhance this knowledge using the new digital networks and tools of access and interaction that it provides provided the required investments are made in infrastructure and training to realize the inherent potential. It is our intention that the information as well as the framework of situated keywords provided in this book will help all concerned with the promotion, development and use of the crafts of India would be empowered to build a sustainable network of live information. This we believe will help our craftsmen re-connect with world markets, just as they had been doing for centuries in their own village and in their trade route networks of the past, and now the world can be their new village economy, if they are enabled and empowered to change to meet these new circumstances with access to information that is both live and relevant.

This volume, “Handmade in India”, is the first of three that are planned and it provides a geographic organization of craft distribution across the length and breadth of the country and shows how craft permeates even the remotest corner of India. In this introductory note we have tried to summarize the enormity of craft variety and the significant role that it plays in the day-to-day lives of both rural and urban people. These linked posts below cover several frequently asked questions about this massive work that has gone on for many years at NID and now we are in a position to make it available to a wider audience for the benefit of informed decisions relating to the development initiatives associated with these crafts in India.

As editors of this work situated as design teachers at India’s National Institute of Design, we would like to celebrate the arrival of the first advance copy from the Mapin Publishers and it is a confirmation of more that 40 years of efforts by faculty and students of this great Institute who have sustained their interest in the crafts of India as a design and development resource for the country when few other organizations showed real interest in what was seen as a glory of the past. That it is a living resource as well as a resource for the future is something that we would strongly advocate and call for sustained investments from both government and industry to ensure its continuity towards a the realization of its future potential as a driver for the creative economy for the estimated six million crafts persons who have kept this knowledge alive through their actions and traditional methods of transmission which we are today trying to capture in an explicit format between the covers of a book. We have had thinkers from the past comparing the crafts of India with the oceans of the world, vast and impossible to put into a bottle of any kind. We are very aware that it is only the whole earth and its gravity that can act as an adequate container for the oceans and water bodies of our planets ecology. Our vast and varied crafts traditions and practices can be compared to this vast ocean and it is only the tips of this enormous ice-berg that are visible in the book and we hope that the web and the digital networks that built in the subsequently phases can support and can play the role of making the rest of the hidden volume visible and accessible in the days ahead. Our attempt has been to provide a framework on which this can be built in the days ahead.

It is a pleasure to hold the advance copy in hand and see the realization of a dream and the fructification of the efforts of several generations of NID designers as well as a large team of contributors who have made this book possible, thank you all. We would like to thank our sponsors the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India, the COHANDS, Mapin Publishers as well as our Institute, the National Institute of Design for having provided us the opportunity of producing this work and we look forward to an active period of cooperation in taking this forward to the next stages through volumes two, three and beyond.

Aditi Ranjan & M P Ranjan
Editors: Handmade in India
7 August 2007 from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

See a note on the Information Architecture used for the book to enable informed web searches on each craft that is covered here in the book.